The Myth of the ‘Scientific’ Detective: A Dissenting View of Science in the Holmes Stories Early in the first Holmes story, A Study in Scarlet, an admiring Watson, a few hours after observing his friend and roommate examine a crime scene, exclaims, “You have brought detection as near an exact science as it ever will […]
Category Archives: Sherlock
The Top Ten Sherlock Holmes short stories
The Top Ten Sherlock Holmes short stories When I first sat down to make this list, I thought I’d be deliberating for weeks; sifting through Conan Doyle classics, weighing up excitement, humour, thrills and the exquisite pleasures of deduction. But then I realised I’d already done a lot of this work, for in my […]
Sherlock Holmes in Verse
Sherlock Holmes in Verse (Sung to the tune of SILVER BELLS) Melodic adaptations of Sherlock Holmes in Verse By Daniel E. Lambert Dirty racetrack, muddy racetrack Running mile after mile In the air There’s a feeling of winning. People yelling Vendors selling Mugs of stout and good beer And after each race you will […]
Book Review of the Week: Unquiet Spirits by Bonnie MacBird
Book Review of the Week: Unquiet Spirits by Bonnie MacBird In October 2015, Bonnie MacBird published her first Sherlock Holmes pastiche, Art in the Blood (not to be confused with the similarly named 2008 Holmes novel by Rainer Jaeger). It was an intriguing tale of Holmes’s investigation into missing children and missing art, and […]
A Few Words About Mycroft Holmes
A Few Words About Mycroft Holmes What do we know about Sherlock’s Bro, Mycroft Holmes? Mycroft Holmes: Smarter than his younger brother, Sherlock, by Sherlock’s own estimation—and no doubt his own as well. A figure of mystery. We know just a little about him from The Canon. He’s first mentioned in “The Greek Interpreter,” when […]
THE RISK OF “THE REVEAL” Tampering With or Augmenting the Legend of Sherlock Holmes
THE RISK OF “THE REVEAL” (Part I) Tampering With or Augmenting the Legend of Sherlock Holmes Sherlockians are a picky lot. And there are degrees of Sherlock Holmes fandom fastidiousness ranging from “I love Holmes in all his incarnations” to “How dare you mess even one iota with Conan Doyle!” For those in the […]
Five of the Best Villains and Victims in Sherlock Holmes Stories
Five of the Best Villains and Victims in Sherlock Holmes Stories People love the Sherlock Holmes stories for lots of reasons, but one of the joys for me is the secondary characters Conan Doyle creates. The best of them are drawn vividly and economically, using a few short lines to bring them to life. […]
What Can Sherlock Holmes Teach you about Writing? It’s all in the Clues…
What makes a Great Clue? Writing Lessons from Masters of Mystery Before I turned ten, I devoured The Complete Sherlock Holmes. Sometimes I read by myself but often I read out loud with my father, who loved Arthur Conan Doyle’s stories and recited passages from memory with great dramatic flair. His favorite, and mine, was […]
Sherlock Holmes and The Scene of the Crime
Sherlock Holmes and The Scene of the Crime The autumn of 1897 presented such an array of singular cases that to pen any one of them seems unjust to those excluded. Clients from all walks of life brought their seemingly insoluble problems to my friend for resolution. There was the case where Holmes vindicated a […]
Top Ten Sherlock Holmes Pastiches
Top Ten Sherlock Holmes Pastiches I’m delighted to present my top ten list of traditionally published pastiches for the venerable Strand Magazine, for which I’m honoured to have written ten of my own Sherlockian tales, which are now collected, for the first time, in The Whole Art of Detection. The Seven Per Cent Solution by […]
The Top Ten Sherlock Holmes Films
The Top Ten Sherlock Holmes Films This article is going to ignite strife, controversy, and debate. Just what I like. I didn’t limit this to films on the big screen because that would exclude Jeremy Brett and Benedict Cumberbatch and then I’d really get some attitude! The Hound of the Baskervilles (1959) I […]
Why is Sherlock Holmes so Popular? Ratiocination Rules!
Why is Sherlock Holmes so Popular? Ratiocination Rules! Readers of The Strand Magazine can be in no doubt that this publication’s most famous “son” is riding high in the popularity stakes at the moment. We live in a time when there are perhaps more incarnations of, and homages to, Sherlock Holmes than ever before: the […]
